Plate tectonics. Literally ridiculed and dismissed as pseudoscience. Now we consider it manifestly obvious.
How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
181–190 of 398 posts
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#182Hasn’t Alzheimer’s been referred to as diabetes type III? It’s inflammation of the brain, and eating a low inflammation diet (low carb, no sugar, fasting) is the best thing one can do to drastically reduce getting it.
I'm not sure that I would state that it's inflammation as a fact, but exercise most likely will not hurt. Peter Attia, who is fanatical about understanding longevity, has said multiple times that he believes the best thing someone can do for long term brain health is exercise every day.
If it does turn out that inflammation is the cause, then things like fasting will also help.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
His talk 'Aliens Cause Global Warming' is about this phenomenon in all but name. Consensus science, marginalizing alternate theories and politicizing scientific inquiry. "your theories differ from mainstream" being a black mark rather than a point of inquiry.
Right, was the backlash against his global warming skepticism? I'm still confused.
Yes, his stance on global warming was controversial at the time and as he died only a few years later is more well known for that, but for reasons he himself laid out in the linked talk.
Most relevant is that he was against consensus science, which was highlighted in the submission. Even if you are 'wrong' and in the group consensus, all is forgiven. If you are 'right' but not in the group, you are blackballed, and if you are wrong and not in the group consensus, you are crucified.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 politic…
> Funding is a political game and the people who are best at politics tend to be the worst at research (and vice-versa). That's not necessarily true. There are people who are excellent at both, but I suppose in practice they are relatively rare. The best recognize research as a cooperative human endeavor, and human elements like bias, ego, etc. can never fully be extricated.
Not sure why you are being down-voted, most research is done in teams, and the likelihood is that a good team has a person who is good as writing grants applications, and having such a person enables them to maintain a team.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#185A 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…
I thought we were talking about science, not spycraft or non-independent emissions testing?
An independent science lab causd the VW scandal by publishing independent measures of emissions. That's one way the process of science corrects itself.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#186The 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…
Ask people who work in any field that does have blind review, and they'll tell you that it isn't actually blind... you can make good guesses on the author list by examining the description of previous work, the reference list, the style of the writing, etc etc.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#187This article is 100% true.
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.
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”.
I don’t have any evidence or examples, but I suspect this dynamic is not limited to Alzheimer’s research.
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.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#188A 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 politic…
> he people who are best at politics tend to be the worst at research (and vice-versa).
Interesting hypothesis. What is your evidence?
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#189>scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas: They influenced what studies got published in top journals, which scientists got funded, who got tenure, and who got speaking slots at reputation-buffing scientific conferences Not quite in topic, but Is it really such a stretch to acknowledge that the same forces i…
> 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…
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Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 und…
What controversial ideas are missing funding, which dissent is missing please? What's the bar. I'm genuinely asking constructively, because I would like to find a scalable improvement on the rather slow moving funding structure (unless driven by hype). But there are hundreds of free energy, "race realist", AGW deniers etc. being blocked by the current system, as well as genuine con men.
Also, I dislike the idea that science doesn't like controversial ideas or dissent. Yes there is group think, yes there are cabals, but in general, if you find weird results, you publish and they get discussed. What else do people want to come out of the proposal controversial ideas? Controversial doesn't make it automatically good