Charles Piller

We spoke with a few people on background who have been the focus of your research.

One person said, sorry, I am tired of this.

It is a non-story.

The anti-amyloid treatments are working now.

Tens of independent confirmations pillar you.

is merely on a book tour.

Response to that, is it indeed true that anti-amyloid treatments are working, that there are tens of independent confirmations of that research?

On the other hand, if I'm a scientist, whether working on this particular research or other research, I might say, well, Charles, you know better than most people that science is really hard.

Alzheimer's is a disease that's been with us for, it sounds like pretty much all of human civilization.

And you need to take these incremental steps to try to find provable directions, at least, of better clinical treatment.

What would your response to that be?

Is it that...

I agree.

I went back to Matthew Schrag to ask what he thinks the future looks like for the research and treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

I have to tell you, Matthew, when I first started doing this Freakonomics work, I signed up for a whole bunch of academic journals, mostly within the realm of econ.

And I got some neuroscience journals because I thought the brain's pretty important.

I'm interested in this kind of stuff.

I should really read these.

I couldn't.

It was so complicated.