Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

statnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 398 posts

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

#151

Post by Certhas »

michaelbarton wrote: post #126
Certhas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wha…

Absolutely, but that's a form of self suppression, rather than a cabal of others suppressing results.

Science is incredibly broken in many ways. I think the big underlying culprit is the prevailing ideology that every human activity is best organized as a competition for scarce resources.

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

#152

Post by asdfman123 »

igorkraw wrote: post #20
ping_pong wrote: post #3

This is another example of group-think in scientific research. The same thing happened for decades where low fat diets were supposed to help for heart disease but that has only recently been reversed after decades of indoctrination. This happens all throughout scientific research, where science is supposed to be immune to this, but it's obviously not. So many things we take as gospel, only to be reversed decades late…

While I'm all for changing funding systems I want to point out that there fact we have these scandals is the system somewhat working . Similarly to how constant criticism of the government/large corporations isn't a sign of rot, but of a system where improvements are still possible -as long as someone is pointing out the problems you can fix them. And science is not supposed to be immune to this, the culture of scien…

I mean, the system is working but it could work better. Politics is actually working right now too -- we have roads and jobs and we aren't starving -- but it could definitely work better.

It sounds like what science needs then is a cultural shift to supporting and funding more controversial ideas, and being more content with dissent. Maybe we need to make a more intentional effort to fund the contrarians with the understanding that maybe they're dead wrong, but maybe giving them some ammunition will give us a head start down the correct path.

The US built the atom bomb so fast because we tried multiple approaches at once. We should approach basic science the same way. (In fact, writing that is seems obvious, because I guess I assume science is "supposed" to work that way anyway.)

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

#153

Post by jmilloy »

OneGuy123 wrote: post #49
praptak wrote: post #32

The major and established beliefs in science usually have some fringe competition/opposition. You can only tell in hindsight whether it's "a cabal stifling valid criticism" or "scientists refusing to waste time on distractions".

You are missing the point. The point is this: we do not have a cure for this dieases now. Therefore, we do not know where to look at all. Therefore the best approach is to look at everything possible, since we obviously have no idea where to look. If we knew where to look, we would have atleast a partial cure. But no cure works now, none.

Resources are finite.

A "depth-first" search is a poor choice because it takes a lot of resources fully test any given "cure". A "breadth-first" search (as you are suggesting) is a poor choice because there are simply too many things to try. It has to be something in between, and researchers use heuristics to decide which branches to pursue. Sometimes they focus too much on the wrong branch.

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

#154

Post by manwe150 »

tempsy wrote: post #131
scottlocklin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The logic that chronic illness can’t be prevented and is either genetic or inevitable is so problematic. Like everyone is going to get old and if I think getting old means I will inevitably get gum disease which could cause Alzheimer’s then why bother flossing or caring about preventative oral health?

I think his point was that these symptoms could be correlation, not causation. So you need to work to prevent each of them as you age. (Eg that flossing is good for your oral health, even though it might have no influence on other factors associated with being old)

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

#155

Post by leftyted »

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…

> 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.

I think that narrative is correct. We can't fix the problem if we don't discuss it. The whole "I believe in science" thing (which you seem to be pushing) is really quite silly.

Funding is a political game and the people who are best at politics tend to be the worst at research (and vice-versa). I think this is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of scientists are hangers-on, i.e. not capable of doing original research. These scientists are terrified of people who can do original research since it makes them look bad (and feel bad, it's actually depressing to think about all the people out there who are way smarter than me).

You can imagine funding schemes that attempt to account for these issues. "For every dollar of funding for interpretation A, earmark 25 cents for alternative interpretations". View science as a market, something beyond our powers to predict, then diversify your investments.

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

#156

Post by svara »

datastoat wrote: post #135
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…

What the linked article says: > In a sea of amyloid-focused grants, there are tiny islands of research on oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and, especially, a protein called tau. The Wikipedia article you cite: > On examining her brain, he found senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles [which are made of tau protein -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurofibrillary_tangle ] What you actually wrote: > In 1911, Alo…

You're right, I should have mentioned tau. But the viral link is the really big deal here that was overlooked for too long.

> It looks like you're part of the cabal!

I have no horse in this race ;) I only commented because the title seemed needlessly inflammatory to me. Everybody should just read the full article, like I wrote I think it's very good.

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

#157

Post by imtringued »

ping_pong wrote: post #3

This is another example of group-think in scientific research. The same thing happened for decades where low fat diets were supposed to help for heart disease but that has only recently been reversed after decades of indoctrination. This happens all throughout scientific research, where science is supposed to be immune to this, but it's obviously not. So many things we take as gospel, only to be reversed decades late…

The thing about low fat diets is that you are not supposed to compensate the lack of fat by adding more refined sugar.

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

#158

Post by btrettel »

jaggednad wrote: post #145

The article talks of journals rejecting papers because the author had already been rejected by other journals or because the author’s prior papers were in less-prestigious journals. This method of selecting papers is the perfect recipe for groupthink. The names of the authors should be removed while a paper is being reviewed—the reviewers shouldn’t know who wrote it so that they’ll be forced to evaluate the paper on…

> they’ll be forced to evaluate the paper on its intrinsic merits rather than the reputation of its author

Similarly, many academics won't evaluate published papers on their own merits and instead focus heavily on proxies like publication venue. Conference papers are unfairly viewed with suspicion compared against journal articles (in my field at least), and certain venues are viewed as superior in general to the point where some "don't count".

These academics instead outsource the evaluation to a few reviewers, who often don't know what they're doing. Peer review does not appear to be as reliable as it is treated. I view peer review as closer to a lottery. And the "best" journals still frequently publish nonsense. It tends to be more pretentious nonsense in my field, though.

I don't care too much about signaling the quality of my work and instead would rather publish in more specialized journals and conferences where I can reach the people I want to reach and get better feedback. I recall at a presentation on getting a faculty job someone said that they won't count any publications in journals with names they don't recognize. Both quality specialized journals and bad journals are included in that set. Add on top of that the common view that conference papers also "don't count" and I think the incentives here are bad.

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

#159

Post by dekhn »

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…

"""feeding into the narrative that science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary is downright dangerous."""

This is precisely what modern science is (well, a major subset). The competition for grant funding and attention space is extremely intense.

I agree there was no "alzheimer's cabal" but it's not uncommon in science for the prevailing mainstream position to (intentionally or otherwise) suppress alternative opinions ("extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence" is often used to maintain the status quo).

One of the important issues is when an idea ends up dominating funding. If you have a legitimate alternative hypothesis but can't get the funding to run the experiments to provide that extraordinary evidence, you'll fail to convince people. The people who get the most funding are the ones who are the most competitive, not the smartest, or the rightest.

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

#160

Post by SubiculumCode »

will4274 wrote: post #141
oblio wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not quite in topic, but Is it really such a stretch to acknowledge that the same forces in academia might bias climate science too? What's the downside to "believing" in climate science, though? Let's say it's all a hoax. The way I see it, the worst thing is funds are diverted for things that don't help us that much. But what's the real down side to climate science for the general population? I don't think anyone w…

> What's the downside to "believing" in climate science, though? Let's say it's all a hoax. The way I see it, the worst thing is funds are diverted for things that don't help us that much. The "green new deal" is estimated to cost between $50 and $100 trillion over ten years. The current US budget is about $4.5 trillion per year. What else could the US government do with between 100% and 200% of the current budget? H…

The green new deal is often described as being just about climate, but it is not, and its costs are not. There is a lot of infrastructure etc spending. Think of it as an omnibus bill.
Post reply on HN