It is an ongoing crisis how much Alzheimer’s research was built on faked amyloid beta data. Potentially billions of dollars from public and private research which might have been spent elsewhere had a competing theory not been overshadowed by the initial fictitious results.
replyThe amyloid hypothesis is still the top candidate for at least a form of Alzheimer's. But yes, the issues with one of the early studies has caused significant issues.
replyI say "a form of Alzheimer's" because it is likely we are labelling a few different diseases as Alzheimer's.
I went searching for more info on this and found https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/faked-beta-amyloid... which was an interesting read.
replyThose studies were all run and paid for, many/most with public funding. Of course it matters.
replyReproducing a paper is Hard, and also Expensive. I'd expect that they wouldn't pick papers to try and reproduce at random.
replyThe issue is null results on these kinds of studies don’t actually mean much.
replyHere sample sizes were tiny, which introduced a vast amount of random noise. The fact so many studies where replicated suggests the vast majority of the underlying studies where valid not just the ones they could reproduce.