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Posted on 01/06/2023 9:32:10 AM PST by DeweyCA
There’s a great article in Bari Weiss’ The Free Press that has great bearing on why consensus in science is often a bad thing, and how the consensus is enforced.
Called "The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s," it was written by Joanne Silberner, a former NPR reporter. What I loved about the article was its insightful reporting about how the scientific process works in practice, rather than how it should in theory. Most people have little idea how academic science works, what the incentives are, how peer review works, how money gets distributed, and all the minutia that determines the path that scientific research takes. Silberner captures the intricacies of the process well.
In 2019, the celebrated science writer Sharon Begley wrote a startling investigative story for the health and medicine publication STAT about why Alzheimer’s research was mired in decades of failure. She asserted this wasn’t just due to the complexity of the brain or the infernal nature of Alzheimer’s itself. There was another reason that had less to do with the nature of the disease, and more to do with the nature of research.
As she wrote:
“The most influential researchers have long believed so dogmatically in one theory of Alzheimer’s that they systematically thwarted alternative approaches. Several scientists described those who controlled the Alzheimer’s agenda as ‘a cabal.’ In more than two dozen interviews, scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas…This stifling of competing ideas, say a growing number of scholars, is a big reason why there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s.”
Now Silberner rightly (or mostly so) dismisses the idea that there is a “cabal,” in the sense that there is a conspiracy to stifle the scientific process per se. Rather, there is something akin to a “cabal,” in the sense that a very powerful group of scientists who firmly believe in their own theory who steer resources and prestige to people who agree with them. This, in turn, has kept research on a particular path and has stifled the search for alternative explanations for the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease, and alternatives for treating the disease.
The particular details of the theory don’t matter for my purposes, although I have personally followed the controversies because that is the sort of thing I do. It has always been striking to me that almost all the research and drug development money has been directed at treating one particular protein expression in the brains of most Alzheimer’s patients, and that every drug that has been developed has been close to useless. AARP did a long story about the use and abuse of dementia drugs, concluding that in the main they are useless and dangerous.
About 20 drugs have been developed to address dementia, and none of them do much except cost money and have side effects. None of them even claim to do much, except produce minor delays in the progression of disease.
If decades of research and drug development has been a failure, why hasn’t there been any major change in Alzheimer’s research?
It has to do with the process of scientific research, not necessarily any problem with either the scientific method or even the greed of pharmaceutical companies. A drug that cured or halted the progression of the disease would be wildly profitable.
One way to understand the persistence of the amyloid theory is to look at the incentives of big academic medicine, big governmental medicine, and big pharma. For decades, time, effort, and money have been sunk into this single hypothesis. If we just make the right intervention in the process of amyloid being deposited in the brain, the logic goes, Alzheimer’s can be beaten.
Acknowledging that this theory may be a dead end would mean entire careers and billions of dollars have all been devoted to the wrong idea. Not only that—there is no clear path to the right one.
Dr. Dennis Selkoe, Professor of Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School, is among the most prominent supporters of the amyloid hypothesis. He’s not happy about accusations of a cabal. “It’s my opinion that there was never any kind of organized or even semi-organized or concerted effort to delegate any aspect of Alzheimer’s research to an inferior position and heighten amyloid studies,” he told me. “Like everything in science and the world, it was a competition of ideas.” He says some of his own amyloid grants have been rejected, and journals have turned down some of his papers. “That’s just part of academic research.”
For many years the powers-that-be within the neuroscience community—researchers who sit on the committees that determine who gets financial support from the government and research organizations, and who review research papers for medical journals to determine what should be published—supported the amyloid hypothesis to the virtual exclusion of any others. As Sharon Begley described it, amyloid proponents “influenced what studies got published in top journals, which scientists got funded, who got tenure, and who got speaking slots at reputation-buffing scientific conferences.”
All it takes is one member of a granting committee (typically, they have a dozen members) or one of the usual three or so reviewers of a research article to kill a project. Cabal or not—and while I think there’s groupthink going on, I don’t think amyloid proponents are engaging in a “conspiracy” —the frustration of the suppressed scientists was and is palpable, and has sent some talented researchers to other fields.
As Dr Selkoe asserts, how the money and prestige is distributed is just part of how academic research works. That is true enough, and it doesn’t require an organized conspiracy for some research paths to get enormous preference and others to get sent to the circular file. All you need is a consensus among decision makers that one path is the way to go. Everything else follows from that.
Consensus is the problem, not the result of proven success. It can impede success, should the people in power be simply wrong in their judgments. It happens all the time. Max Planck, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, put this phenomenon succinctly: “A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.“
This, of course, is a slight exaggeration. Albert Einstein certainly had a huge impact and changed science forever, and he did it from a low-prestige position at the Swiss patent office. But of course being in the Swiss patent office he had no academic masters or funders to please. In today’s academic environment, he would have had a much more difficult time breaking through the clutter.
People unfamiliar with the academic sciences underestimate the obstacles to doing good science in such an environment. Research projects depend upon grants, peer review processes, dissertation, hiring and tenure committees…. The lone genius scientist working in obscurity and generating a groundbreaking new theory is just not realistic.
Ironically, some of the greatest researchers of the 2nd half of the 20th century worked outside of academia. Bell Labs and Xerox Parc produced some great science once upon a time, because these incredibly profitable businesses funded basic research with fewer strings attached than is usually the case in academia. I remember meeting Arno Penzias, who won the Nobel Prize for work he did at Bell Labs, discovering basic evidence for the Big Bang theory. (My parents were astrophysicists).
As we have all seen during the COVID era, consensus in science can be as big a barrier to clear thinking and scientific discussion as outright censorship. The public health community rallied around an idea and sidelined anybody who dissented. It went to great extremes that are unusual in science, but the process is similar.
Science is a human enterprise, and like all human enterprises it really isn’t objective and abstract, as much as the best scientists try to make it so. In fact, some of the most creative scientists are also the least tolerant of other ideas. Big ideas and big egos go together often enough.
So keep all this in mind as you listen to scientists discuss their ideas, knowing that the process by which theories arise is complicated and messy. That doesn’t mean that science is corrupt. It means it is human.
Look up the name John C. Houbolt.
In the early days of the US space program they had been considering two possible methods/techniques for shooting a rocket to the moon, “direct ascent” and “earth orbit rendezvous.” Von Braun himself favored EOR and anybody not on board with him would be swimming up stream.
Houbolt was a NASA engineer who had studied a technique first proposed in 1916 by Russian astronautics pioneer Yuri Kondratyuk called “lunar orbit rendezvous.” He’d run the numbers and knew it would be more efficient than either of the other two, and he thought the risks posed by LOR were more manageable. But nobody was buying what he was selling, so he bucked the chain of command — and in the doing, put his career on the line — and sent a 9-page letter to an assistant NASA administrator explaining why his method was provably better, and maybe even the only one that could work.
You might never heard his name but John Houbolt probably had more to do with the success of the Apollo program than any other single individual. Some speculate that his ideas saved the program from being a disaster of historic proportions instead of a nation’s crowning glory. But he’d never have had that impact if he hadn’t been willing to stand up to consensus.
The way we're headed, it may be again.
Isn't natural vitamin D from the sun via ultra-violet radiation? That's the best kind.
And Ethernet, which became computer networking. Robert Metcalfe, of the Xerox PARC Laboratory.
And the first object-oriented computer language, by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls and Adele Goldberg, also of Xerox PARC.
Xerox was run by ex-Ford Motor Company executives. They were focused on making copiers. None of the above inventions, which played a large role in ushering in the internet age, were seen as helping Xerox sell more copiers.
Even as photocopying technology became a commodity, taken for granted and practically ignored, eventually being almost completely superseded by the computer desktop, computer graphics, and file sharing.
Yes, the amyloid theory has failed to yield any drugs that work. And the FDA approved an amyloid drug that does NOT work, sending Medicare into a tizzy!!!!
The leading competing tau theory may not yield any drugs that work either!
The NIH needs to start a special program for Alzheimer’s research based on alternative models ASAP! And they need to throw out sociological requirements such as “diversity” and “big teams” in awarding those grants!! Such a program will also stimulate venture capitalists to fund biotechs based on alternative models.
One issue is that there are subtypes of Alzheimer’s-like disease that may work via different mechanisms. Solve any one subtype, and that is progress!
Finally, even with better disease models, it may be some time before there are any working therapies. Neuroscience research is tough!!
Years ago David Packard (hp) founded MBARI with the intention of breaking the funding cycle. He put up many millions of dollars after finding that most scientists in oceanography
spend half their time writing grants. The group was roughly half engineers and half scientists. The eng’rs (including me) loved it. Proposals were evaluated on merit; not ROI.
The scientists balked and demanded that they be allowed to continue the grant process for fear that once outside peer review that they’d never get back into the loop. Dave lost.
“Thank you for your personal examples of where you have seen science fraud.”
Your welcome. One more example that shows the difference in consequences between fraud in academia and in industry. In academia the consequences are few or none. Here’s what happened in industry. One Friday, all seemed normal with scientist X who was seen working in the lab. After the weekend we found his office dark and locked (no one locked their offices), and his name had been taken off his door and the Lab directory. NOBODY in management would talk about him. He was basically disappeared from the organization. Later we found out he had been caught faking some data.
FWIW - vitamin D deficiency and a negative outcome with Covid is well studied and well established. While our bodies produce vitamin D in sunlight you can easily replace it by taking cheap vitamin D in supplements.
I would be interested in reading the thread you referenced if you can find it. FRegards
There's something evil about bureaucracies and committees. I think it's that the evil in men's hearts comes out when responsibility and blame can be shifted onto a group.
You see this in the behavior of mobs.
Thomas Sowell says much the same thing in the YouTube video of him entitled, “Intellectuals and Society.” Liberal academicians can survive advocating stupid ideas because there are o negative consequences to them because they have tenure, while liberal engineers have to directly face the consequences of their stupid ideas.
The gov’t did more to stop the distribution of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine then fentanyl”
Look for Near Infrared Light on 1/2/23
Thanks - that is an interesting thread and I will read the article and studies.
It's a four-list ping, kinda fancy.
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.....most scientists in oceanography spend half their time writing grants......
Most scientists who become lab leaders in any field spend MOST of their time writing grants!!!!
This is a big waste and might be another reason we don’t have good treatment for many diseases, including Alzheimer’s!!!!
“.... Insurance against fraudulent data is reproducibility of your results by others. This is rarely attempted because there is no one free to do it. ....”
Or fund it!
Also, there’s no ‘reward’ in doing it! You will not get a graduate degree - PhD, etc. for doing ‘reproducibility work’ even though it’s absolutely vital for science to move forward. The current system produces ‘papers’ that are likely not meaningful and that’s about it.
Consensus in science has been destroying good science for hundreds of years.
Is the earth flat?
Stars are holes in the firmament.
Eggs are bad for you.
Cigarettes will cure colon cancer.
> Cigarettes will cure colon cancer.
Of course, the trick is keeping them lit without blowing a hole in something...
Another term for science by consensus is “political science”.
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