Alzheimer’s Researchers Under Fire: Acclaimed Journalist Explains Why

Originally broadcast February 27, 2025.

How reliable is the current research into the cause of Alzheimer’s disease? Award-winning author Charles Piller’s new book is “Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s”; it’s raising important questions about certain images that may have been manipulated to bolster the amyloid hypothesis as the cause of Alzheimer’s.

Piller tells “Conversations on Health Care” that “what you have are a multitude of images — not just in Alzheimer’s disease but in many other areas — that have slipped through, that have not been well-examined, and that are, in fact, falsified, or appear to be falsified,” adding that closer scrutiny of images could spur scientists “to re-examine whether the experiments themselves are worth publishing.”

Piller couches this by noting that misconduct occurs in “a small percentage” of research and “does not represent the vast bulk” of work in the field. But a greater emphasis on checks and balances is needed, he says.

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter also ask Piller to respond to criticism of his reporting as well as explain other potential sources of hope in the research field. For instance, clinical trials may reveal, as early as next year, the possible impact of GLP-1 inhibitors — medications developed for obesity and diabetes — on Alzheimer’s. Another theory examines the effect of latent viruses, such as herpes, on the brain.

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