Yes, I share some of your concerns about groupthink and research cliques. The best and balanced critique is Karl Herrup’s book at MIT Press: “How Not To Study a Disease”.
Your comment is over the top with respect to NIH-funded researchers doing Alzheimer’s research. The emotion would be entirely appropriate if directed at RJ Reynolds Inc. and other cigarette companies or Purdue Pharma. Those are evil companies that many governments have tolerated killing for profit—Purdue Pharma and the OxyContin disaster alone about 500,000 Americans over 20 years; and US tobacco companies contribute to about as many excess deaths per year.
The systematic image manipulation by a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Sylvain Lesné, was egregious and worthy of jail time but he was a truly exceptional case and polluted 20 or more papers that did distract the entire field. You can read all about it here.
PMID: 35862524
Piller C. Blots on a field? Science. 2022 377:358-363.
doi: 10.1126/science.add9993
Your comment is over the top with respect to NIH-funded researchers doing Alzheimer’s research. The emotion would be entirely appropriate if directed at RJ Reynolds Inc. and other cigarette companies or Purdue Pharma. Those are evil companies that many governments have tolerated killing for profit—Purdue Pharma and the OxyContin disaster alone about 500,000 Americans over 20 years; and US tobacco companies contribute to about as many excess deaths per year.
The systematic image manipulation by a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Sylvain Lesné, was egregious and worthy of jail time but he was a truly exceptional case and polluted 20 or more papers that did distract the entire field. You can read all about it here.
PMID: 35862524 Piller C. Blots on a field? Science. 2022 377:358-363. doi: 10.1126/science.add9993