A highly - summon report on Alzheimer ’s Disease , published in the journal Nature in 2006 , may have involve the alteration of image to back up the results , aninvestigation published in Sciencehas aver .

Sometime last year , two neuroscientists contacted Mathew Schrag – a neuroscientist and physician at Vanderbilt University – to help oneself them in an investigation into the drug Simufilam , and its developer Cassava Sciences . The neuroscientists , who are poor Peter Sellers who make a net income if Cassava Sciences ' store falls , believe that they may have blob potentially deceitful activities in inquiry related to the drug , andfiled a petitionwith the Federal Drug Administration ( FDA ) to halt trials on the observational drug " pending audits of 1 the publications relied on by Cassava in financial support of its scientific claims concerning Simufilam " .

Schrag – whose own research was at betting odds with claims made by Cassava – took on the investigating , exit through published images from inquiry relating to the drug or the scientific discipline behind it .

grant to Schrag and a subsequent investigation by Science , akey firearm of research – which claimed to show that the accruement of Aβ clumps ( brass ) in the brain " may kick in to cognitive shortage associated with Alzheimer ’s disease " – may involve effigy meddling . Specifically , these call relate to the oligomer of Aβ termed Aβ*56 .

Science asked several expert to critique image that Schrag had found to contain " red flags " . fit in to one Alzheimer ’s expert at the University of Kentucky – Dr Donna Wilcock – image tampering in the research put out by Sylvain Lesné of the University of Minnesota seems to be " shockingly blazing " .

" It ’s blatant , persistent , and inexcusable , " Wilcockexpanded on Twitter . " Lesné appears to have repeatedly manipulated western smear images to pitch a story that has been irreproducible by scientists in our field . "

According to molecular life scientist and well - known forensic image consultantElisabeth Bik , the authors of the report “ appeared to have composed build by piecing together parts of picture from unlike experiments . ” She evidence Science " the obtain data-based consequence might not have been the hope results , and that data might have been changed to … better fit a hypothesis . ”

concern about images in document authored by Lesné look to have beenraised independentlyon online " journal club"PubPeer .

While the allegations are big , and the significance for Alzheimer ’s research – and the meter and money potentially drop die down a fictive path – are huge too , claims about the size of it of the scandal may have been overblown since the piece in Science was published .

" The impact on the field of force is somewhat overstated , " Wilcock , who had reviewed the images as part of the investigating , wrote on Twitter . " Those of us forge in the field have understood for some time this work is not consistent – science just lacks the power to publish such finding so word - of - mouth is how this is known . "

While serious , people within the field – includingAlzheimer ’s Research UK – tenseness that if the allegations are correct , the shock is not as big as it may seem from the outside .

" The main paper at issue here did NOT establish the amyloid plaque model . It discussed a specific oligomer of AB termed AB*56 .   There are plenty of other papers in the field showing grandness and result of oligomers and indissoluble amyloid ( memorial tablet ) mintage on numerous factors , " Alzheimer ’s postdoc Samuel Marshwrote on Twitter .

" I sincerely doubt that the absence of this particular composition and AB*56 from historical scientific record would have importantly changed the last 20 years of [ Alzheimer ’s ] drug development .   That is because there is strong genetic and other grounds for the role of amyloid in disease . "

Meanwhile , Prof Sir John Hardy from University College London , who developed the amyloid hypothesis in the 1990s , told Alzheimer ’s Research UK that he was skeptical of the impingement this newspaper has had .

“ I have never thought this paper was authoritative , and I do n’t think I have ever refer to it in my own piece of work , ” Hardy toldAlzheimer ’s Research UK , adding “ it is a shame if these papers regard deceit , and journal and psychiatric hospital ask to crack down on put-on when it is reveal . "

Lesné is currentlyunder investigationby the University of Minnesota , where he is an associate professor .

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