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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

#251

Post by caycep »

greglindahl wrote: post #242
quantified wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recall the saying that science proceeds one funeral at a time. I believe it was coined as part of describing the shift to acceptance of plate tectonics.

That's the worst case. It doesn't always proceed that slowly.

The professional science/medicine funding system (i.e. NIH money) can be characterized by "cabal" depending on how you look at at it. If by "cabal" they mean any organized profesional vetting system. I suppose there is a trade off between vetting good funding ideas from the bad, vs. the risk of "suppressing" original views aside from the "dogma".

Did some alternative views get squashed by not receiving R or K grants? maybe. I would bet some of them might have been true original ideas that needed money to get good preliminary data. But many of them probably did not pan out.

A lengthy way of saying I agree w/ the OP of the thread...

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

#252

Post by mcguire »

hitekker wrote: post #230
dang wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a better title? We can change it. Better = more accurate and neutral, using representative language from the article.

How about "Collusion" instead of "Cabal"? Wikipedia defines collusion as "a secret cooperation or deceitful agreement in order to deceive others, although not necessarily illegal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion

You'd have to demonstrate 'deceit' and 'cooperation'.

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

#253

Post by clairity »

bobthechef wrote: post #221
clairity wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

science doesn't have to be conservative at all, so why presume it? most (advanced) knowledge is tentative anyway, so why not take the strategy of accepting it all while it's uncertain? negative results are just a valuable as advances, and contradictions are just areas begging for more research. what you really seem to be asking is "why can't science be more efficient?" and science shouldn't be more efficient. it shou…

When people say that science is conservative, what they mean is that it progresses slowly and cautiously to built up certainty. Science is a tradition that typically progresses incrementally and is revised incrementally (I should say, there are many scientific traditions that proceed this way, not some single, grand, capital S "Science!"). When anomalies occur in the experimental results, it takes a while for them to…

you're idealizing science and literally begging the question[0], in this case, making an a priori assumption that science must proceed conservatively and then trying to rationalize that position.

conservatism unduly burdens science by overly valuing correctness over exploration. science advances on the latter, not the former.

be wrong, it's ok. it only adds to our scientific knowledge. we can't even know when we're wrong without a grueling many attempts at being right.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

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

#254

Post by [deleted] »

knzhou wrote: post #232

Whenever you hear about science being a "cabal", you have to remember that there's a huge survivorship bias. At any moment in science, there are a few dominant hypotheses, which seem to work pretty well, and hundreds of alternative hypotheses, with only vague evidence in favor of them. The vast majority of alternative hypotheses turn out to be completely wrong, and the researchers pushing them are forgotten. The few…

[deleted]

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

#255

Post by OGWhales »

knzhou wrote: post #232

Whenever you hear about science being a "cabal", you have to remember that there's a huge survivorship bias. At any moment in science, there are a few dominant hypotheses, which seem to work pretty well, and hundreds of alternative hypotheses, with only vague evidence in favor of them. The vast majority of alternative hypotheses turn out to be completely wrong, and the researchers pushing them are forgotten. The few…

>Despite being described as a “cabal,” the amyloid camp was neither organized nor nefarious. Those who championed the amyloid hypothesis truly believed it, and thought that focusing money and attention on it rather than competing ideas was the surest way to an effective drug.

I felt the author did a decent job trying to explain this themselves, but the title is pretty misleading in my opinion.

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

#256

Post by btilly »

quantified wrote: post #237
knzhou wrote: post #232

Whenever you hear about science being a "cabal", you have to remember that there's a huge survivorship bias. At any moment in science, there are a few dominant hypotheses, which seem to work pretty well, and hundreds of alternative hypotheses, with only vague evidence in favor of them. The vast majority of alternative hypotheses turn out to be completely wrong, and the researchers pushing them are forgotten. The few…

Recall the saying that science proceeds one funeral at a time. I believe it was coined as part of describing the shift to acceptance of plate tectonics.

It was coined by Max Plank in 1930.

I believe that it was about the acceptance of Quantum Mechanics.

Examples include that Edward Cope never accepted Darwin's theory of evolution (even though the fossils that he found were good evidence for it), Albert Einstein never accepted QM (even though his Nobel was for one of the key discoveries on the way to QM), and Fred Hoyle never accepted the Big Bang (even though he coined the phrase).

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

#257

Post by OGWhales »

wavepruner wrote: post #226
cockatiel_day wrote: post #187

This 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…

"I suspect this dynamic is not limited to Alzheimer’s research." Agreed, I think it is a universal problem in science. 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.

Care to share further? You have sparked my curiosity.

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

#258

Post by dang »

mirimir wrote: post #235
dang wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a better title? We can change it. Better = more accurate and neutral, using representative language from the article.

How about "The beta-amyloid paradigm thwarted progress toward an Alzheimer’s cure"?

Ok, we'll use something like that. Thanks!

Edit: I've changed it back because readers are divided on this.

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

#259

Post by dang »

hitekker wrote: post #230
dang wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a better title? We can change it. Better = more accurate and neutral, using representative language from the article.

How about "Collusion" instead of "Cabal"? Wikipedia defines collusion as "a secret cooperation or deceitful agreement in order to deceive others, although not necessarily illegal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion

The word 'collusion' doesn't appear in the article and has its own triggering capacities these days. Best not to go there.

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

#260

Post by chiefalchemist »

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.

> "...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..."

Can you resolve / flesh this out more? If the desire for funding is a key driver of behavior then it would seem most anything is possible, including conspiracy or related nefarious activites.

Humans, especially those with big ideas and big egos, in pursuit of fortune and fame have been known to bend and break the rules.

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