This is true, sad to say. "Big new discovery about Altzheimer's Disease (in mice)" is pretty much on a par with "Amazing new battery (in lab)". You see articles like this a couple of times a year, but they never pan out.
Thats not to say that this research isn't worth-while, just don't expect it to turn into a cure for humans.
Its like cancer research in the 70s. Lots of money focused on a couple of areas of drug development (like chemo), but the real progress is going to come from long term, deep mechanistic research. We spent so much money on cancer treatments in the 70s, but the real impact came from the work that slowly revealed the underpinnings of cancer as a genetic disease as well as the development of new modalities of treatment (immunotherapy) that paid massive dividends down the line. In the same way, I think we need deeper fundamental understandings of the disease, and that combining those with the explosion in new treatment modalities we've seen over the past two decades (e.g. cell and gene therapies etc.) Is whats going to get us over the finish line. Until then, might as well keep throwing immunotherapies at whatever targets we find hoping one of them will stick, the same way we did cancer research with small molecules decades ago.
But both were definitely worth while. No doubt chemo has saved/extended lines, and most likely a winnable research goal in the short term, while the investments needed (e.g. immuno/genetic therapy and etiologies, was simply beyond the near term capabilities of science in the 70's.
Even the battery comparison is generous because improvements in battery tech actually have made it out of the lab and into consumer products. Further, a lab battery actually functions as a battery, whereas a cure for fake mouse Alzheimer’s is several steps away from being proven as a cure for human Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s research is more like research into room temperature superconductors. No one has proven that what they’re seeking is even possible, but it sure would be nice.
less seriously, what if we permuted the qualifiers: "big new discovery about altzheimer's disease (in a diamond anvil)" "amazing new battery (in mice)"
Thats not to say that this research isn't worth-while, just don't expect it to turn into a cure for humans.