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It's also my field. One clarification I would make is, I think, foundational. The amyloid research that was famously falsified was not the mainstream "amyloid hypothesis" research. It was a very niche subset, as GP described. As for people feeling shut out of funding: people feel a lot of things all the time, but I've never seen a good idea be repeatedly denied funding because it wasn't amyloid-primary. Unfortunately, it's usually a lack of rigor, lack of pertinence, lack of preliminary data demonstrating plausibility and feasibility, or some combination. Not always--there are big money and prestige politics going on all the time, but that has nothing to do with amyloid. To add another nearly useless data point, my lab and those I collaborate with focus on amyloid as well as tau, alpha-synuclein, TDP-43, microvascular changes, and inflammatory contributions. Metabolomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics are other big systems biological approaches. Not to mention social determinants of health, which are also massive. All that said, I'll read the book, but the "daring journalist finds a crew of whistleblowers" framing strokes me as either ignorant or disingenuous. Off-putting either way, as we face major cuts to public funding of health science, which has overall been an extremely generative and sustainable model for improving national and world health. |