Kelly goes behind the scenes of Alzheimer’s research with science writer Charles Piller whose new book is called “Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s.”  

How did this investigation into fraudulent Alzheimer’s research begin? 

“Back in December 2021, I was talking with this guy, Matthew Schrag, who’s an investigator and neuroscientist clinician at Vanderbilt University. He had been instrumental in finding some apparent problems in research underlying a new Alzheimer’s drug called Simufilam. Now that is a long story. That drug crashed and burned. We can talk about it, but I’m going to jump forward to what in many ways was a much more interesting and important development, which was in honing his ability to see problems in images and scientific studies. In other words, to do what they call forensic image analysis of these images that are representing the results of experiments. He stumbled across problems in one of the most influential studies in Alzheimer’s disease that had been run in decades. And it was pretty stunning.” 

You know, whistle blowing rarely goes well for the whistleblowers. 

“And believe me, it was a long journey to have Matt Schrag be able to put his name on the record associated with this long series of stories that I ended up doing in Science Magazine and then also, of course, the book. And he showed remarkable courage, but it literally took four months of discussions for him to be willing to roll the dice on being publicly known.”

You also report how so many individuals who are part of the agencies approving or rejecting these drugs and treatments end up working for the same companies that they have said yes or no to. 

“Yeah, there’s no question that there’s a revolving door with regulators back and forth within the industry. There’s absolutely no question about it. I would say that there has been complacency in the regulatory structure towards these kinds of problems. Terrible complacency. And as a result, we’ve seen a lot of doctored studies, studies that have been false or are unreliable. What’s so terrible is that the vast majority of studies that are written in science generally, and I think in Alzheimer’s research specifically, are completely legit studies. And I’m not calling into question those. I’m merely saying that there has been lapses that have not been well handled by the agencies that are charged with doing so. And it has led to confusion. And it has led, I’m afraid, to some false starts and problems.” 

Photo Credit: Mike McGee