| I think the quote you provided shows exactly why it is so difficult. When you are comparing a group who survived bladder cancer and then looking at those numbers and figuring out if the bladder cancer treatment had a preventative effect on Alzheimer's, many many things are being conflated together. You initially have survivorship bias of those who were alive after bladder cancer. How many of the bladder cancer people had AD, or another disease? Though I'm sure the BCG treatment helped in their treatment of bladder cancer, did these people respond better to the bladder cancer treatment because of other factors? Did they have better lifestyle than those who did not, less inflammation, better diet, etc etc. How many women were in the study? AD affects twice as many women as men. If AD is an infectious disease, why would this be? Type 3 Diabetes is a strong candidate as an alternative theory to AD, but Type 2 Diabetes, though more damaging to women, does not occur at twice the rate as in men? So why would this be? Again, I'm not saying other theories are wrong, but everything is VERY difficult to prove. The Amyloid hypothesis, which I would also label as the sleep theory of AD, is tied to reduced glymphatic function, reducing the brain's ability to clear metabolic waste. Why would this affect women much more prominently than men? Motherhood and Menopause, both of which are very disruptive to women's sleep. Of course maternal diabetes can also play a significant role. I completely agree with Sabine Hossenfelder and you that improvements need to be made to the scientific process, including publishing of negative findings, and improved open discussion regarding published papers. I suggested to someone recently that they create a HackerNews of research papers and we don't just have citations, but open discussion of people expert in the space. There are letters in publications, but that is not directly tied and linked back to the paper. A friend was developing something similar to this years ago, but was never able to find enough traction or a business model that makes it work. |